Assuming Command
by slipstream
Summary: With Leo incapacitated and the city drowning in their wake, Donnie struggles to take the helm. It's a long, long drive to the farmhouse. (2k14 verse, post-canon)


Donnie can't remember the last time Mikey was this quiet for this long. Can't remember much beyond the past few hours leading to them fleeing Manhattan in a hot-wired Chanel 6 news van with his oldest brother curled comatose between the rear wheel wells, actually. Flashes of things come through unbidden—Karai triumphant, face hidden and pronged gauntlets slick with blood; shattered glass flickering whitegoldred on the floor as flames swallow April's apartment; city streets drowning under a surge of dark water, storm drains gurgling filth as the overfull sewers vomit under the onslaught—but when he tries to probe further all he finds is sheets of static hung up like electrified curtains, a hasty force field meant to keep him from treading over freshly scorched neurons.

Shock. He's in shock.

But he can't be in shock. He's not allowed. Mikey and Raph and April and Leo (broken bleeding burned but _breathing_ keep _breathing_ Leo Leo you gotta keep) _need_ him and he's not—

Between their shells and the broadcasting equipment they haven't had the time or tools to rip out and cast aside there's barely room to think in the back of the van, especially with Leo stretched out on the roughly napped carpet. The van reeks of old take-out and the overpowering char of singed flesh. It takes all the willpower he can spare to keep from gagging, his nausea not helped at all by the van's badly balanced suspension and the heavily potholed highway beneath them.

Casey has a place upstate, he says, an old farm turned commune by his stubbornly free-spirited grandparents, abandoned now but out of the way and _safe_.

"Just like home," he assures them, knuckles white around the steering wheel. "Reeks of patchouli and everything."

(Donatello knows too well the smell of dead rats after a hard rain. How it feels to wade through their bloated, loose-limbed bodies.)

Mikey watches intently as Donnie fiddles with the leads connecting Leo to his hastily-repurposed computer pack. He feels naked without its familiar weight against his shell, untethered, but his brother's need is far greater than his own. Leo's heart rate is erratic, his breathing shallow. They need to get him someplace quiet and still. Someplace where Donnie can _focus_.

"He'll be okay." Mikey's voice is rough from disuse and unshed tears. One hand hovers hesitatingly over the long crack in Leo's shell, wanting to touch but afraid of shattering him further. "Right?"

Raph's eyes flick up to meet his, silver irises shadowed by the same question. All they want is a word. Just one. Yes or...

Or...

There are days when Donnie just _can't_ shut up (not _won't_ , because will is not the issue, because the words just trip and run on and on and he's not fast enough to catch them, to pull them away from the places they aren't wanted), and there are days when sound won't come at all. At least not in the shapes he wants it too. Tongue stuck and chest full of too-hot air and the raw, high whining of his brain still has to come _out_ , somehow, like steam from a tea kettle.

Lucky then for the cold sink of his body, for long reptilian limbs that leak heat into the damp chill of sewer. Lucky then for morning practice and the repetition of _bow_ and _stretch_ and _hit_ and _hit_ and _hit_ ("Again, Donatello") until the rhythm overwhelms him, the impact of stone and wood and flesh against his palms knuckles feet shell wrapping itself like a heavy blanket over all his too-prominent parts.

(Sometimes, when he should be sleeping, he lies awake for hours, sickened by the feel of his own heart beating. A fist-sized machine beyond his control, a drum forever out of step with the rapid-fire cadence inside his head.)

"You alright, Don?" Casey calls. He's watching him through the rearview mirror, brow furrowed and eyes bloodshot. April, after much brow-beating from Raph, finally crawled into the front seat for a nap half an hour ago. The hard jut of her forehead rattles faintly against the passenger door window as the van drifts briefly across the rumble strip. The blue glow of the console radio dial is just bright enough for Donnie to make out her reflection against the glass, pale and expressionless as the moon, jaw slack against her chest and lank hair lank streaked with soot. She looks dead. Deader than Leo, even, and he's—

"I gotta," Donnie says. "I gotta, I gotta—"

The rest doesn't want to come out. Not even when he rolls his head back (and back and back), mouth stretched wide as possible to give it room. Not even when his fingers worm their way inside to try and pull it free.

"Hey." Raph looms into his space, but it's not him he's talking to. A hand the size of a hubcap reaches out, taps Casey decisively on the shoulder. "Pull over. Piss break."

The good thing about this part of rural New England, there's no shortage of desolate side roads.

Raph all but pushes him out of the back of the van before Casey can even put it in park. Is somehow also there to catch Donnie again as his locked limbs struggle to orient themselves in this suddenly expanded universe. That doesn't quite make sense, but who else would it be? Mikey's not tall enough to haul him up fullway by the shell like that and Leo is—

And _Dad_ is—

The long grass is slick beneath his boots. Down the edge of a ditch, then up the other side. This is the darkest night he's ever seen, city lights hours behind them and the stars hidden behind thick, roiling clouds. The trees whisper conspiratorially amongst themselves as Raph marches him deep beneath their cover, both of them making more noise than any ninja has right to.

Deep, deep, deeper. The yellow glow of headlights vanishes behind the thick guard of tree trunks.

"Raph," he says, breath hitching. " _Raph,_ I gotta... I-I gottaaa _aah_ —!"

"Hold on," he says. His tread is hurried but even, each heavy footfall kicking up thick , damp blooms of petrichor. "Hold on, a little further..."

They emerge in a small clearing thickly carpeted in pine needles. If it weren't for the roar of blood in Donnie's ears all would be silent, silent.

Raph's grip on his shell is suddenly cloying. He twists out beneath it, shoulders hunched and arms up in a defensive block.

" _Donnie._ " Raph's command voice is a hollow mockery of Leo's, bigger but lacking the iron core that keeps it from ringing. "Donnie, we need you to hold it together."

Donnie shakes his head, teeth gritted. The Earth is a rock hurtling thirty kilometers per second through space and the endless black of the night above threatens to swallow him whole and _how can he do this?_ How can any of them—

"Not forever. Just for now. Just until Leo's up and fighting again."

"He's..." It's so hard to _breathe_. "Raph, he's _not_ —"

"He _is_ ," Raph interrupts. "We _all_ are."

"Raph..."

" _Hit me_ ," he says, and that's an order Donatello can gladly obey.

It's an ugly fight. No weapons, no finesse. Leo would... But Leo's _not,_ is he? Leo's not, and that makes Donnie eldest, makes him—

"I _can't!_ " he gasps. "Raph, Raph, I-I-I _can't_ I _can't!_ "

"You _can_ ," Raph growls. I'll help you."

Donnie roundhouse kicks him across the face. Harder than he meant to. The jolt vibrates all the way up his spine, down the curve of his shell. The sound of Raph's teeth snapping together rings out like a shot in the little clearing.

"Fuck!" he grunts, spitting thickly onto the dense forest floor. Donnie can smell the blood from here. "Now _that's_ what I'm _talkin'_ about!"

By the time they finish, he can't feel anything but the burn of cool night air ballooning his heaving lungs. One ear is ringing and his bad shoulder clicks faintly every time he moves it, but when they step back into the glow of the headlights it's clear that Raphael got the worse end of things.

Casey is sitting on the front bumper, hunched guiltily over a cigarette. His eyes go round at the sight of Raph's bruised and rapidly-swelling jaw, the still-oozing bite mark sunk deep into one shoulder.

" _Jesus!_ " he chokes, nearly swallowing the half-smoked butt. "Did you guys run into a bear or something?"

"Or something," Donnie echoes. Something deep, deep inside of him, some instinct as old and territorial as the dinosaurs, feels sated. Feels calm. The world firmer beneath his feet, his place within it rightly won.

Mikey pokes his head out of the back of the van, mouth open around the start of a question. The breeze shifts, his nostrils flare around the fresh copper of blood, and with a quick glance at Donnie, then Raph, then Donnie again, he closes his mouth, nods, and slips back inside.

The front passenger door creaks open. "Why are we stopped?" April asks with a yawn, scrubbing blearily at her face. If anything, she looks more exhausted after her all-too-brief nap. "What's going on?"

Raph sidles up beside him, a wall of flesh between him and the trees. "It's nothing," he says. Nudges him, then, hard with one elbow, the way he does when Leo pulls him up short. "Right, boss?"

Donnie looks up, letting the word roll around in his head like a marble, adjusting to _feel_ of it, the _weight_. The wind has parted the clouds just enough for him to glimpse a sliver of constellation-studded sky beyond, the arched head of the Nemean lion staring back in distant, glittering approval.

"C'mon," he says, and that's his voice, but there's something else there, buoying it up. Something borrowed but unbending. "Let's go."


End file.
